Director level Agents and retrieval, advisory

The work

Builds agentic workflows and retrieval systems that return the right thing.

A standing second opinion. Small commitments, and the ones where being right matters most because nobody is checking your work.

The bar

You have carried the decision at a level where being wrong was expensive, and you can describe a time you were.

Why this one is hard to judge. Retrieval quality is measurable, but almost nobody measures it. Ask for the numbers and most cannot produce any.

What we ask to see

• A retrieval or agentic system you built, with the retrieval quality numbers
• How the evaluation set was built and why you trust it
• A case where retrieval was confidently wrong, and what you did

One solid item beats five vague ones. A referee we can actually call beats a link to a landing page.

What gets an application declined

• The only evidence offered is a certification, a course, or a job title
• Every piece of evidence is under an NDA and no sanitised version or referee is offered
• The work described is entirely a demonstration, a proof of concept, or a hackathon
• More than six disciplines are claimed, which we read as a signal that none has been assessed

If we decline you, the reason is written down and sent to you. The software refuses a decline without one.

What it pays

£413 to £788 a day. That is the tenth to ninetieth percentile of what UK employers advertised for the closest published titles over the six months to 8 August 2026.

Advertised UK contract day rates for Generative AI, tenth to ninetieth percentile, six months to 8 August 2026. Advertised, not agreed, and set by the hirer rather than by us.